posted
1. Enterprise-A had to be an older ship. Why would they decommision a roughly 10 year old ship?
2. Going by registries - which you all hate - i reckon that the Excelsior NX-2000 had VERY early beginnings - even possibly during TOS years. i.e. drawing board sorta stuff.
3. Transwarp might not (as someone has mentioned) have been a RADICALLY different Warp but just a warp that was fast enough to allow the change in the warp scale warp cubed - TNG style. This might fit with the new warp core that we see on the E-A during STVI (yes it was just a redress of the E-D's engine room).
4. Watching ST3 SE last night - The Excelsior had Warp and then it built to Transwarp.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
posted
Styles tells Miguel Ferrero to prepare for warp speed. And then later 'Transwarp' is ready to be used. And the computer is telling the crew that they are at warp speed (of course they aren't) and then it says it's ready for 'Transwarp' - which it does in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... (of course they don't get it.)
AND why would the Transwarp project be ended - Scotty just removed some computer parts - nothing to do with the ACTUAL drive. They presumably would have everything backed up on Starbases and Earth etc. I just think - as I think I mentioned that Transwarp was the push into faster warp - that we see in TNG, the new scale etc. - and that we probably don't see it on the E-A in ST:5 too soon, but several years later are the events of ST:6 - within which time another 5 year mission could have taken place - or even 3 year and the warp drive could have been upgraded to Transwarp.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
quote:Originally posted by AndrewR: 1. Enterprise-A had to be an older ship. Why would they decommision a roughly 10 year old ship?
Ah, but prehaps the ship had seen lots of stressful service? Ya know, sort of like how I wore out my Neon in 86,000 miles but my Corsica lasted for 130,000...
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quote:Originally posted by AndrewR: AND why would the Transwarp project be ended - Scotty just removed some computer parts - nothing to do with the ACTUAL drive. They presumably would have everything backed up on Starbases and Earth etc.
That's what I was suggesting earlier -- that Scotty's sabotage didn't end the Experiment in and of itself. Instead, the project never worked in subsequent tests after the sabotage was repaired.
When the Excelsior failed to have a practical transwarp drive, they re-worked the essential parts of the design to conform to normal warp principles instead.
Also, having a propulsion system that can be completely disabled by removing three tiny chips can not be a good thing...
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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2240s: Constitution-class commissioned, and at the time is SF's largest and most powerful starship design. There are only 12 built at this time and most or all of them are sent out onto the frontiers to conduct exploration, initiate contact with new races, and to patrol hostile border zones.
2260s: Heavy losses to Constitution-class lineup, as many hostile lifeforms and races are encountered. The Romulans make a reappearance, their first since the War in the 2150-60s. An intense Cold War-type atmosphere develops between the UFP and the Klingon Empire, kept from exploding into full-scale conflict only by the fragile Organian Peace Treaty. Starfleet would have felt the need to bolster its defensive and offensive capabilities. They plan and initiate the development of new designs including the Federation-class dreadnought, though for whatever reason these do not end up being produced in any large numbers. It is also somewhere between this point and TMP that the very earliest stages of Excelsior-class development project are initiated. (Why? Because the prototype has NX-2000 as its number, but by TMP we have already have the dreadnought U.S.S. Entente with NCC-2120.)
I will state firmly now that I personally believe the Excelsior project was transwarp-oriented from the first, that the ship was designed and planned to be a transwarp cruiser whose designers (probably a small group of aspiring theoretical engineers and scientists convinced that they'd discovered the key to the next big bang in starship propulsion) likely hoped would EVENTUALLY some day replace the Constitution at the forefront of the Fleet. I DO NOT believe that Starfleet Command authorized its development specifically as a replacement for the Connies. A couple of guys presented SFC with some starry-eyed preachings about the potential of transwarp drive and found enough support to get a ball rolling (albeit very slowly) on the development of their brainchild. Starfleet probably didn't realize the grand implications until later. I think that the higher-ups were more concerned simply with strengthening, expanding, and augmenting the Fleet at this time, and I think the rest of the timeline supports this. That is my opinion.
2270: The Enterprise returns from her 5-year mission in deep space and SF initiates a massive refit program to update its remaining Constitutions and initiates the construction of new vessels as well.
2273: The V'Ger incident takes place, an event which I think would have inspired a great feeling of vulnerability in both the Federation Council and Starfleet Command. Their desire to solidify their defenses (and offenses) would have been further reinforced. A short time later, the Miranda- and Soyuz-classes are developed and launched, using modified Connie-refit components.
2280: The Constellation-class development project is initiated. The Constellation is designed to carry out long-range sensor analysis within threat territories, reconnaissance and intelligence gathering, deployment and retrieval of cargo and stealth shuttles, as well as general science and patrol duties. Like the Miranda and Soyuz, it is intended to augment the newly redesigned Constitution-class cruisers. The earliest design stages of the Ambassador-class have been begun as well.
2284: The U.S.S. Constellation NX-1974 is launched. Project Genesis begins.
2285: STII Construction of U.S.S. Excelsior nears completion.
STIII Older Constitutions are being scheduled for replacement. (I admit that this is curious, given that most or all underwent refits little more than a decade before. Perhaps as the construction of newbuilt ships progressed, flaws were found in the design of the early refits? At any rate, they were being replaced probably with newbuilt Connies, or possibly something else, but NOT with Excelsiors.)
Excelsior has been officially commissioned (SD 8205.5 according to the dedication plaque, which falls nicely between TWOK's 8130.3 and TSFS's 8219.3) and is ready for trial runs, but is sabotaged by Scotty when the Enterprise is stolen. (The way I look at it, we can interpret the subsequent failure of the transwarp drive in two ways. Firstly, it could be attributed to flaws in the theoretical science behind the drive system, in which case Scotty's sabotage was---unbeknownst to him, of course---quite unnecessary, as the ship wouldn't have worked anyway. Alternatively, and perhaps more controversially, Scotty could have done something more to the Excelsior than just pulling out the chips he handed to McCoy. Perhaps, in addition to pocketing those "souvenirs," he damaged the ship in some more critical internal way. Completely fried her circuits or something. I wouldn't put it past him, considering his utter hatred of the ship. And the reason why Starfleet never again experimented with transwarp was because they simply lost faith in the concept after this fiasco, even though it may have been theoretically sound.)
2286: Starfleet continues replacing old Constitutions with newbuilt ones. Among the ships slated for replacement is the U.S.S. Yorktown NCC-1717.
TVH The Probe/Whalesong crisis occurs. At this point, the Excelsior is still sitting in Spacedock, disabled. The Yorktown is neutralized by the Probe. After the crisis, her intended replacement is instead christened Enterprise. (The Yorktown will still be replaced at some point before 2293. Whether the NCC-1717 was kept in service until a new replacement was built or was simply scrapped after the Probe incident is unclear, but unimportant.)
2287: The Excelsior is STILL non-functional in Spacedock.
2288: The Soyuz-class is taken out of service. (The reason for this has never been explained, but has been theorized to possibly be because of some class-specific design flaw, hence the similar Miranda-class and other ships utilizing the same components remaining in service. Or, alternatively, it was a gesture for the benefit of the talks that Ambassador Curzon Dax conducted with the Klingons the following year. [As per DS9 "Blood Oath"])
2290: The Excelsior is finally refitted as a conventional warp vessel and put into active service. It is at this point that I feel Starfleet first recognized that even without transwarp, the Excelsior could be a powerful weapon and could have the potential to replace the Constitution-class as the "big gun" of the Fleet. Upon this revelation, they probably began mass-producing the design. (SoundEffect: When I said 7 years in my earlier post, I was mistakenly counting from 2286 to 2293, rather than 2290. )
2293: TUC The Khitomer talks threaten to undo all of the militaristic expansion that SF has gone through over the previous three decades, and many within Starfleet are none too anxious for that to happen, hence the conspiracy to undermine the peace initiative.
By this point, there are at least a few Excelsior-class ships in service. (Reverend: I have come to the conclusion that the Operation Retrieve silhouettes---the largest of the three types shown---which were interpreted as Connies are actually Excelsiors. The two smaller silhouette types are, I believe, Constitutions and Mirandas. There were definitely no Oberths on the chart.)
About the Enterprise-A's decommissioning: There is something that is often forgotten. Kirk's closing log at the end of TUC implies that while the old TOS crew is being retired, the ship herself is to be passed on to another crew. The E-A was not intended to be decommissioned at the end of the film. However, when TPTB went to make Generations, they wanted to show the launching of the Enterprise-B, which they placed in the months following TUC. So what's the explanation? Why did SF decide to decommission the only 7-year-old Enterprise-A? I believe it's because once they knew they had a bigger and better design on their hands, namely the Excelsior-class, they were eager to use the Enterprise legacy to endorse it. Remember that the name Enterprise had in the eyes of Federation citizens everywhere a representation of Starfleet's best qualities. It held, I suspect, a massive amount of propaganda (or, to put it politely, "publicity") value. So they were eager to have one of their new cruisers be named Enterprise, and that was their reason for scrapping the E-A. Once they *did* see the damage inflicted on the vessel by the fight with the BoP, I'm sure they felt all the more justified in this.
So, by the beginning of the 24th century, the Excelsior had gone from being a pipe dream transwarp super-ship to being regarded as an utter failure and all but disowned by SF to becoming the strongest defensive and offensive weapon in widespread use throughout the Fleet. The ship was obviously a subsequent success, as it went on to be one of the most widely-produced and longest-lived designs known.
And there you have my conjectural history of the Excelsior-class!
-MMoM
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posted
Mim, I really, really like that line of reasoning! For one thing, having a 20-year-long transwarp development project actually JUSTIFIES the tag name "The Great Experiment." (Emphasis on "experiment" -- as in, "unproven.")
A couple of minor points: considering the basically-chronological system of registry numbers (which I know is a can of worms unto itself), the Miranda-class would have to predate the Excelsior by a few years, maybe even a decade. This would lead to the suggestion (which some fans have already supported) that the Mirandas were originally similar to the TOS Enterprise in appearance, and were refitted shortly after (or before) the 1701 in TMP.
Coincidentally, that would mean that the Constellation-class starships would also have to predate the Excelsior, perhaps with the prototype being the first new ship launched with the new style of appearance around 2270. (Of course, that questions the reason why the prototype Constellation was still undergoing trials in 2293, but that might be explained somehow...)
Actually, I just remembered the mention of the USS Hathaway from TNG, which was given a specific age and launch date of 2285... by that reasoning, the number NCC-2593 fits in rather well!
OTOH, there's also the USS Repulse from TNG which was an Excelsior, with the number NCC-2544...
*sigh*
Anyway, to get back to the Excelsior's transwarp drive... I figure that Scotty wouldn't have totally disabled the ship or actually destroyed anything. First, IMO he was derisive of the ship because it was over-thought and overall a hair-brained engineering concept. Second, he didn't need to totally destroy the project, he just needed to prevent the ship from chasing down the Enterprise.
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posted
The history of the Constellation and Miranda classes was expounded upon in this article by Rick Sternbach in Star Trek: The Magaizne some months ago.
He says (and I happen to agree) that the Miranda and Soyuz were outgrowths of the Constitution-class refit program, and therefore did not exist in some other form prior to the 2270s. They, and the Constellation are products of the movie era.
About registries, it could easily be that there are certain blocks or ranges that are sometimes reserved for particluar projects in advance. Therefore, if SF knew it was going to be expanding in the near future, they might have set aside the NCC-1800 to NCC-1900 range for that purpose. When the Excelsior project was first initiated, it got NX-2000 reserved and then things went from there. The Connies continued on in the NCC-1700 range Thus you have all your new vessels from the movie era with registries in those three ranges. The oddities like the Connies may be a result of Starfleet going back and filling gaps in the system by assigning registries that were reserved at some point in the past for something but never ended up being used to other vessels. Or something.
Of course, as I said, the only reason why the Excelsior need be thought of as having been conceived so early is because of the NCC-2120 in TMP. But, as we all know, that number was taken from Franz Joseph, whose registries weren't sequential between classes at all...
-MMoM
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posted
Other than the common image of Col. West with the Operation Retrieve chart, is there a better or clearer version anywhere that shows these silhouettes you guys are talking about?
posted
The Oberth could just me a design influenced by some new Federation member-species and the impact of that culture's technology and design estetic on the fleet.
I always thought the Soyuz was intended to act as a deep space subspace tranciever in unexlored areas where starfleet had not built any yet. That would explain both the proliferation of antenna arrays on the ship and the reason for their discontunuation ( starfleet reigns in it's rate of expansion as a result of the Kitomer accords and builds subspace permanent trancievers in it's sphere of influence). All the ideas about the Excelsior are valid, but I'd imagine there was at least one other class testing the same technology at the same time foe objective comparison analsis. Mabye the "other" class encountered design flaws that kept Excelsior in spacedock making refinments and improvements. THe other class could have been ASDB'd Merced class (looks Excelsior-ish to me) or the four nacelled Excelsior study model that we see in the Qualor II shipyards.
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quote: He says (and I happen to agree) that the Miranda and Soyuz were outgrowths of the Constitution-class refit program, and therefore did not exist in some other form prior to the 2270s. They, and the Constellation are products of the movie era.
Well we know Sternbach would say this as he has all his own conjectural ships in that Spaceflight Chronology!! - Just because it's old doesn't make - in his eyes - his work invalid.
I don't like the idea of at least the Miranda hanging about - and the Soyuz too I guess, seeing as it was retired so early.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
posted
Sternbach indeed said that the Miranda class was an outgrowth of the refit project. But that doesn't say anything about the Surya class .
I agree with the early beginnings of the Excelsior experiment. Given that the NCC-1700 was launched way back in 2245, the NX-2000 would be somewhere in the early 2260s at the very latest. The Constellation's registry number could be from an unused batch of numbers, or perhaps it evolved from an unused NX-1947 proposal from the 2250s-60s.
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